from
America Goes To War
0230 GMT October 15, 2010
Guess in which Army can a brigade commander ignore his superiors on
national strategy and get away it? (Hint: this not the army if a
banana republic or one where a brigade commander runs the country as
president)
If someone had told us two days ago that this country was the United
States, we would have refused to believe it. After all, the US Army is
a wholly professional, tightly disciplined force, is it not? Well,
apparently not.
Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article on the incidents of
civilian killings in 5th Brigade, 2nd Division. Being the WashPo, it
breathtakingly got the significance of its own story wrong. It
wondered - with neither logic nor data - if the brigade commander's
aggressive pursuit of anti-Taliban operations had anything to do with
the killings. After having floated this straw person, WashPo proceeds
to clearly show that the killings have everything to do with one
psychotic soldier and nothing to do with the brigade commander.
You'd think that the story would end by saying "No, there is no
connection between the CO and killings" because that is what the
WashPo's own investigation to its own question shows. Instead, in the
usual media style of "I'm just saying" - no sense in blaming Mr. Glenn
Beck when the media uses the same technique - it refuses to draw a
conclusion, leaving all but the most careful readers with the
impression there might be connection even though the data WashPo
presents shows exactly the opposite.
We'd say the WashPo is being its usual despicable self. Unfortunately,
this is not just the WashPo. This is what passes for news and analysis
these days. You cannot single out a single media source when the
entire business works on innuendo - that would be the "good" media -
and outright lies - that would be the "bad" media.
Being clueless, the WashPo never thinks to follow up on an astonishing
revelation about the brigade commander. From the day he arrived, the
brigade CO decided he was not going to follow the strategy that was
laid down for him by his superiors going all the way back to the
President of the United States. He was not going to do
counterinsurgency, which was his orders, he was going to do
counter-guerilla, which was his own thing.
The distinction between CI and counter-guerilla is simply that the
former is hearts-and-minds, the latter is kill the enemy. Readers may
well ask: is that a bad thing? Aren't we at war and isn't the
objective of war to kill the enemy? Well, we could have a debate about
which strategy is better, but whatever you and I may decide, the point
is that a CI strategy has been laid down for Afghanistan, not
counter-guerilla. The reasoning is that in CG, since dead insurgents
is the priority, lots if civilians also get killed (think Vietnam and
Iraq). In CI, you avoid killing people, sometimes even insurgents,
because you want to win them over to your point of view.
So here we have the brigade commander, who is told by his evaluators
in pre-deployment training that he will lose points because he is not
doing as told. Our question: lose points for refusing to carry out
orders of your superiors? Excuse me? Is this some kind of TV game? In
the real world, if you don't follow orders, you get fired.
So the brigade deploys to Afghanistan, and the good colonel even
forbids the mention of the words CI. He proceeds to do as he pleases,
to the point other US and allied commanders asks the Regional Command
(equivalent to a division) Chief of staff to talk to the colonel. The
COS is a brigadier, and he fails to make any impression on the
colonel, and goes back. Brigade officers who dare to point out to
their CO that brigade is not following the top Afghan military
commander's strategy find they do not fare well.
Meantime, in the article there is no mention of what the Regional
Command CO, the corps commander, the commander for Afghanistan, the
head of Central Command, the Army COS, the Pentagon, the President's
national security advisors, or the President are doing.
So not only you have a rogue brigade commander, you have seniors who
are unable to tell the commander where he gets off, or who really are
not concerned.
We don't know what our readers would call this. But Editor, who has
spent fifty years studying defense, believes it be called only one
thing: a completely dysfunctional higher command system.
We have said this before, but we'll say it again. Gulf I gave everyone
hope that the US Army had left forever behind the astonishing and
criminal dysfunction of its Vietnam years. But after the conventional
phase of Gulf II was done, it slowly became apparent to the public
that all the bad old ways of senior commanders was returning. In
Afghanistan this became apparent when the Taliban began to resurge,
That said, Editor has to make clear, the above is nothing to him
personally. He has no dog in this fight, or to be more apropos, he
doesn't have a cockroach in this fight because it surely aint
dignified enough to be a dog fight. Editor is not a US citizen. Only
his youngest child is of draft age, but realistically, given the
youngster is 24 and a math/computer graduate, even in the case of a
general war it's unlikely he'd end up at the mercy of commanders such
as the US Army has. But readers who are citizens have to make a
decision. Are they, out of a completely wrong sense of loyalty to
their military going to continue tolerating this stupidity decade
after decade, or are they going to work to put an end to it.
While you all carry on, Editor will do what he does best: relax, think
big thoughts, and eat chocolate. Oh yes, also for the Nth time try and
chat up the ladies in the YMCA.
--
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear
of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-AFGHANISTAN
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Pakistan-Army-Journal-The-Citadel
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21952758/1971-India-Pakistan-War
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25171703/BOOK-REVIEWS-BY-AGHA-H-AMIN
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